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“Paul McCartney’s secret love affair” (interview with Maggie McGivern in the Daily Mail, April 12, 1997)

[Full transcript beneath the cut:]

Millions of words have been written about The Beatles — but little, if anything, is known of a girl called Maggie McGivern.

Yet now it can be revealed for the first time that she is the woman who had a secret affair with Paul McCartney for more than three years.

They were the years songs such as Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever and All You Need Is Love were enchanting the world.

More pertinently they included the years in which he had his relationship with actress Jane Asher, and when he met the woman who would become Linda McCartney.

The saga begins early in 1966 when Maggie was working as a nanny for Marianne Faithfull and her husband, John Dunbar, a Cambridge graduate and artist.

Their son, Nicholas, had been born the previous November. Marianne had a third-floor flat in Chelsea, in the heart of what was then Swinging London, the capital city of the Sixties. For more than three years The Beatles had been storming the pop charts — and society.

Help! was the sensation of the previous summer and the double-sided Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out was in the charts. Beatlemania was everywhere and Maggie, through her new job, would quickly get used to rubbing shoulders with the famous.

One day when the buzzer rang on the intercom for the flat, she didn’t recognise the voice from the ground floor. The young man asked if John was around. ‘Who is it?’ said Maggie. ‘Paul McCartney,’ said the voice. ‘Oh — come up . . .’

‘Paul ran up the stairs and came in,’ she recalls. ‘Very casually I told him John wasn’t really in — and that sent us both into hysterics. We were laughing and chatting.

‘I had made a nice lunch for Marianne and a bunch of her friends but they never showed up. Paul and I sat together and ate it instead. I’ll never forget the meal — it was chicken casserole. It was such a funny introduction that it threw us both off guard. It could have been very embarrassing, but there was an immediate rapport and we just couldn’t stop talking.’

Maggie, whose once-dark hair is now dyed honey-blonde, told how she and Paul became closer in the months that followed, even though they each had a separate relationship.

Maggie had a photographer boyfriend and McCartney was seeing a pretty young actress called Jane Asher, living for a time in her parents’ house before she moved in with him.

‘It was a gradual thing,’ says Maggie. ‘From that point on Paul kept coming up to the flat. He was very good friends with John but I knew he was coming to see me.

‘He would ring and ask if anyone was there and if there wasn’t, he would come up. We used to talk about lots of things but it was obvious to both of us that our other relationships were not going well.’

It took six months before their association, as Maggie puts it, turned from friendship to love. The Beatles had been recording their Revolver album, released at the end of summer 1966.

One evening McCartney, John Dunbar and some friends returned from Paris with some demo tapes of the album and played them for Maggie. ‘There was something in the air that night and that’s how it all started,’ she says. ‘He ended up staying the night and we went to bed. It was wonderful.

‘The next morning was one of the most previous moments of my life. We didn’t say much but it was such a tranquil, pleasant feeling — made all the more so because we left things unsaid. He stayed with me until lunchtime and we chatted and larked about. Everything with Paul was so natural. From that moment on he used to come around regularly.’

By this stage The Beatles had stopped doing live performances and tours but McCartney was putting just as much effort into recording. Maggie was frequently abroad on modelling assignments.

‘When we were having our love affair, I hardly phoned him,’ she says. ‘He used to find me wherever I was, and that was fine as far as I was concerned. He did tell me that Jane Asher had moved in with him at his house in St John’s Wood and I remember saying that it meant nothing to me.

‘Throughout the relationship I never pursued him — I just didn’t think about him having other women. My view on relationships has always been that if something works, it works. If it’s meant to be, let it be. Besides which, I had a busy life, and I was very busy living it.

‘Our relationship was a secret from day one, at first because we didn’t want Jane to find out, and later because we preferred it like that. We hardly ever went to parties. We would occasionally go to restaurants but normally we’d walk his dogs in Regent’s Park or go for drives in the country.

‘We craved isolation and I for one did not want to become an overnight superstar — I certainly wasn’t ready for that emotionally.’

Secrecy, of course, was vital for the continued success of their relationship. Maggie, who now lives in Brighton and works as a rollerblade instructor, says: ‘I don’t believe celebrities when they say they can’t keep affairs secret. We managed it quite well for more than three years.’

She described a trip to Paris in 1966 with John Lennon and The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein. All of them flew into France separately — Lennon had been filming abroad and Epstein had been away on business. Maggie and Paul, she says, traveled apart ‘as part of keeping the relationship secret’. During the five-day trip the foursome stayed at the same Paris hotel where she and Paul shared a luxury suite. ‘It was a marvelous holiday,’ she says. ‘. . . just walking around the streets of Paris.

‘My abiding memory is of me, John and Paul lying under the Eiffel Tower, gazing up at it. We couldn’t go up because we would have been recognised, and we were masters at the art of avoiding people.

‘Throughout the relationship we never met in obvious places. We would go to places like auction rooms in South Kensington, and say “whoops — fancy meeting you here”.’

By this point, Maggie saw Paul as a permanent fixture in her life, but gave no serious thought to marriage or children.

Maggie was 20 and McCartney 23 when they met. At the time, she says, she had no conception of the enormity of the scene in which she was involved. ‘I know it really sounds strange but I didn’t really regard it as a big deal. They were mad times and the world was changing. People look back on it now as an era — but all we were doing was living in it.

‘I knew in my heart that Paul was a real family man — when I was working at Marianne’s we used to spend hours just looking at little Nicholas. It was obvious Paul wanted children but, at that stage, I was in no way ready for it. I was a free spirit.’

Maggie worked for Marianne and John for about 18 months before leaving to set up an antiques stall in Chelsea Market. Even without that direct line to the famous, however, she still saw a great deal of McCartney.

She had a shared flat in Chelsea, but she was still busy modelling, and had appeared as an extra in films, including Blow-Up, which was released in 1966.

At one stage, she says, Paul had wanted her to be a chorus girl in The Beatles’ production of Magical Mystery Tour, which was screened on TV over Christmas 1967, but he couldn’t locate her and chose another girl, also called Maggie.

By now their relationship was becoming serious, she says: ‘By this time he knew that I was in love with him, and I knew he loved me, too.

‘I never told any friends that we were seeing each other — that was an unspoken rule. My mum and dad knew, but not in any detail.

‘I used to spend many nights at his house in St John’s Wood. It was a beautiful Regency house, and his garden was full of Alice In Wonderland characters built in stone. We spent many romantic times there. At the end of the garden was a glass-topped, circular, domed building where we meditated. I’ll never forget the first time he showed me that place.

‘We went inside the dome and he told me to stand on the floor. Suddenly, the floor started rising and there I was, up in the air, looking at the stars. After that we used to spend a lot of time together on the raised platform looking at the stars.

‘That’s what it was like, you see. By the time he and The Beatles were into the Maharishi and that whole scene, so was I — there were amazing parallels in our personalities.’

One day the couple went to the Indica Gallery in London with a group of showbiz friends, where John Lennon met Yoko Ono.

‘We spent more time with John and than we did with George and Ringo — we hardly saw them at all.’

In the summer of 1968, McCartney’s engagement to Jane Asher ended. Later, it emerged that she had arrived back at their house to find him with another woman — not Maggie, but an American called Francie Schwartz.

Maggie says: ‘By September 1968 I had rented a flat on my own in Fawcett Street, Chelsea. I really wanted to live alone. I hadn’t been there long when one day I got a telegram at my flat from Paul. It said: “Flying to the sun. Car picking you up at 8pm. Love Paul.”

‘I was so excited because I had no idea where we were going. A car drew up and we went to pick up Paul at St John’s Wood. As he came out he took an Instamatic camera from a fan, who was camped outside his house, and told us he was borrowing it to take on holiday.

‘Paul had hired a private jet so no one would spot us. There was a proper lounge, no rows of seats — we were drinking champagne and laughing and joking with a male cousin of Paul, and his American girlfriend. I kept asking him where we were going, but he refused to tell me.’

The plane landed in Sardinia but Maggie had no idea where she was until she spotted a sign. They had a hotel suite overlooking the ocean.

Much of their time was spent in restaurants where, she says, they were ‘treated like royalty’. At one banquet in their honour, they walked into a room full of women dressed in ballgowns. Maggie had a T-shirt dress. ‘Paul and I just collapsed in giggles,’ she says. ‘We thought it was hilarious.’

Most of their time, however, was spent on the golden sands. Indeed, while they were on the beach, two things happened which changed the course of their relationship.

First, they were spotted by a photographer — a picture of them together appeared in a Sunday newspaper back home. The report described her as his ‘new girlfriend’.

Maggie confirmed that they had been going out together — and suddenly the world knew of their secret liaison.

More significantly, perhaps, it may have changed the way they viewed themselves.

Maggie explains: ‘We were lying on the beach just being young and in love. Paul turned to me, smiling, and out of the blue he just said: “Have you ever thought about getting married?”

‘I said: “Yes, I suppose, one day . . .” and I thought nothing more of it. Looking back, it was obviously the wrong answer. When I said “one day” I meant in six months, maybe, but not never.

‘But Paul was always slightly insecure and probably saw me as such a free spirit that he thought I was never going to settle down.

‘On the journey home we were singing Those Were The Days and falling around laughing. I went back to Paul’s house with him — I distinctly remember waltzing around the room with him.’

Paul and Maggie continued to see each other in the following months but the subject of marriage was never mentioned again, she says.

‘I suppose I assumed we would end up together but at the time I was just enjoying it all. In the Sixties there was so much going on that I didn’t have time to sit and think about the future. I suppose that, with the pressures of fame, Paul was craving security.’

He would find it, it transpired, with an American blonde called Linda Eastman.

Maggie says: ‘One day, a little while after we returned from Sardinia, I rang Paul — and Linda answered the phone. I had seen a newspaper story about him having lunch with her before that, but I wasn’t the type to ask questions or get jealous.

‘I remember Paul telling Linda to get off the phone and I asked him who she was and what was happening. He said: “I don’t know the scene, man. I don’t know what’s going on.” ’

By late 1968 and 1969, The Beatles had massively increased the following of the Flower Power and hippie movement in Britain. It was a time of freedom, free love, drugs and music.

But for McCartney it was also, it seems, a time of emotional confusion.

Maggie remembers McCartney arriving at her flat late one night. ‘He was really down and I couldn’t seem to get a word out of him,’ she says. ‘He was crying and I knew he had been stressed. I stood and held him and asked him to tell me what was wrong. Then suddenly he jumped up and he said he had to go. Somehow I knew when I closed the door that night I wouldn’t see him again.’

A couple of days later she was walking along the King’s Road when she noticed four words on a newspaper billboard: ‘Paul and Linda marry.’

‘My heart just thumped,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t believe it. He never told me he was getting married and he never told me our relationship was over. I didn’t contact him for ages. I had never pursued him and I wasn’t going to start then.

‘Not many people knew we were going out together in the first place so there was no point in telling them it was over. Obviously, I told my mum and dad but not even they knew the depths of my suffering and depression.

‘Looking back, I think I was in serious shock and it didn’t come out properly until years later.’

Until yesterday, Maggie has never felt able to discuss her true feelings about the relationship and the separation. The remarkable story emerged only after her mother, Evelyn, confirmed details to the Daily Mail.

Maggie agreed to speak only reluctantly — she said she would always care for Paul, and desperately wants to avoid upsetting him and his wife Linda, who is fighting cancer.

Subsequently Maggie started a relationship with rock musician Denny Laine and it was through him, after he joined McCartney’s group Wings, that she saw Paul again, in 1971 or 1972.

‘It was a very emotional meeting and we had a great big hug. We were standing there gripping each other when there was a tap on his shoulder. We turned around and it was Linda. Paul told her who I was and she said she had heard about me. There was, of course, an unfriendly atmosphere and we didn’t get a chance to have a real conversation.’

The next time Maggie ran into Paul she was seeing her husband-to-be, Mel Collins, whom she married in 1974 after falling pregnant with their daughter, Naiama. This meeting was also difficult, she says. ‘There were a lot of sarcastic comments towards me.’

Six years passed before she saw him again. Maggie was shopping with her daughter at Harvey Nichols in London when she decided to try on a designer dress.

‘I was looking at myself in the mirror when a voice said: “That looks great.” It was Paul . . . he was buying Christmas presents for Linda. We got talking for a little while and then just said our goodbyes. We never discussed the relationship or anything like that.’

It was only at a later meeting, at a film studio in 1984, that she remembers rediscovering some of their earlier rapport. But it vanished when Linda appeared. Maggie says: ‘Paul’s whole demeanor changed — he’s a different person when he’s with her.

‘But, to give Linda credit, although we were still uneasy we chatted quite amiably about horses and things like that. I suppose after years of marriage and several children, there was no need for any nastiness.’

That was the last time Maggie saw McCartney, but she admits to thinking about him almost daily.

‘Marriage? I’m the type to move on and live my life and not regret anything,’ she says, ‘but obviously I still feel the pain. I kick myself for that day on the beach in Sardinia.’

#fascinating #paul mccartney

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